


hurry, hurry (you put my head in such a flurry, flurry)

by canistakahari



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy Era, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Karaoke, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:38:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canistakahari/pseuds/canistakahari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaila wants to have a picnic. Uhura accidentally agrees. Things go kind of weird from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hurry, hurry (you put my head in such a flurry, flurry)

  
“I would like to go on a picnic,” says Gaila, without warning, on Friday morning.   
  
The request itself should be warning enough, actually.  
  
But Uhura is busy sitting cross-legged on her bed, fully dressed as she carefully picks apart a buttery croissant from the bakery just off campus; there is a PADD in her lap reciting Romulan and she has class in ten minutes. She  _should_  be listening to Gaila, but then she stumbles over a simple verb form that would probably make her instructor cry if he actually had tear ducts, and drops flakes of pastry onto her uniform.   
  
“Sure,” she says, making a face and brushing away the croissant, because judging by the expectant look on Gaila’s face and the tone and inflection in her voice, she’s looking for affirmation and Uhura’s suddenly in too much of a rush to really consider the consequences of agreeing to something without knowing what it is.   
  
It’s a classic mistake.  
  
“Really?” says Gaila, brightening. She doesn’t have a class until 1100 hours on Fridays, and is, enviably, still wearing her pyjamas. The over-sized t-shirt is tie-dye, clashing horribly with everything in existence, and her stretchy black pants cut off at the calf. Gaila is probably the most adorable person Uhura has ever met, and when she smiles like that, dimpled and sweet and genuinely excited, Uhura usually smiles with her because what sort of monster would she have to be  _not_  to?   
  
“Um,” says Uhura, bending over to zip up her boots. Generally she hates resorting to place-filler words like ‘um’ and ‘uh’ to stall for time. “Why not? I’m sure that will be—fun.”  
  
Gaila nods, ringlets bouncing, and says, “Yes! I’ll find a large blanket, and a basket, and we can fill it with food.”  
  
Uhura reviews this sentence, and safely comes to a conclusion. “When do you want to have the picnic?”  
  
“Tonight?” asks Gaila. She settles on her own bed, fingers sliding into her hair to pull it back into a ponytail, and then she retrieves her graphing tablet from the night table and drops it into her lap, tapping the stylus on. Blueprints flicker to life, and Gaila begins to draw and erase lines with a lazy grace that Uhura secretly admires, her long, elegant fingers guiding the stylus with ease. “I know picnics are traditionally held during the day, but I cannot do anything during the weekend—I am taking part in a training seminar. And having a picnic under the stars would be nice, don’t you think?”  
  
Uhura doesn’t have plans this evening and spending a quiet evening chatting with Gaila sounds relaxing and appealing. She smiles. “Of course. I’ll pick up something for dessert.”  
  
“Ooh,” says Gaila, with a dimpled grin. “Can it please have chocolate? And raspberries?”  
  


oOo

  
  
If she had the time, Uhura would bake a dessert herself.   
  
She enjoys baking in the sort of masochistic way that only people who don’t get a chance to bake regularly can. When she’s in class most days for at least six hours and spends her weekends attending seminars and practicing diction and receiving and translating subspace communications, then she misses the calming, precise act of combining ingredients in eager anticipation of the end result, but when she is actually in the kitchen, and she doesn’t have cream of tartar and gets egg shells in the mixing bowl and ends up covered in flecks of batter, then she reminds herself that baking is really only soothing in theory.   
  
Either way, she has Advanced Phonology until 1800 hours, so she ends up in her favourite bakery for the second time that day, standing in from of the counter eyeing cream puffs and éclairs and immaculate cakes. There’s a chocolate-raspberry tart that seems to fit the bill, so she gets it boxed, and heads back to the room.   
  
Gaila is already there, wearing a bright yellow shirt and pink shorts, her long legs on display as she bends over to lace sandals onto her feet.   
  
“Nyota!” she says, straightening up. There’s a smiley face printed across the chest of her shirt. “The basket is on the table. You can put the dessert in.”  
  
“Should I even ask what else you’ve got in there?” asks Uhura, peering curiously into the basket. The contents are all sealed in opaque containers, away from prying eyes.   
  
“I researched typical picnic food,” Gaila informs her, shaking out her hair and pinning half of it back. “The most popular item was potato salad. I replicated some of that, and a few different varieties of sandwiches. There is also a traditional Orion soup I made myself. Several ingredients were lacking from the rec centre’s grocery store, but I think I found suitable replacements. Hopefully.”  
  
“Ah,” says Uhura faintly, raising her eyebrows. “That couldn’t go wrong at all.”  
  
“It turned blue,” muses Gaila, pressing a finger to her lips. “Normally it is not blue.”  
  
Uhura smiles, because she doesn’t know what else to do, and finds a nice top and a pair of jeans, and lets Gaila herd her out of the room with blankets and basket in hand.   
  


oOo

  
  
When listing the available food, Gaila didn’t mention the truly staggering amount of alcohol that she’s also packed neatly into the picnic basket. She only reveals it when they’re onto the dessert, which Uhura kind of wants to eat forever, and are talking heatedly about soccer.  
  
“You do not think they were cheated out of a goal?”  
  
“I never said that,” points out Uhura, eyeballing her glass and splashing in another shot of gin. “I  _do_  think that bad calls are so ubiquitous it’s sick. Are you going to finish that?” She points at Gaila’s second slice of tart.  
  
“Yes,” says Gaila, narrowing her eyes. “I am. There is another half of the dessert in the carton. Focus your attention on that, Nyota.”  
  
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” says Uhura, leaning back against the tree and stealing a potato off Gaila’s plate. It’s distracting enough that Gaila misses Uhura snitching a forkful of her tart. “Would you be willing to take a commission?”  
  
Gaila sandwiches a potato between two apple slices and takes a serious bite. “It depends what you offer me in return,” she teases.   
  
“Well, it would be an art commission; I’d be willing to pay credits,” says Uhura. “Or I was thinking I could owe you a favour? Your choice. I’d like a drawing of San Francisco. I keep prints of places I’ve been, lived, but you draw so beautifully, and something hand-drawn would mean a lot more.”  
  
“That could be arranged,” says Gaila agreeably. “You don’t need to give me anything in return, Nyota. I enjoy drawing.”  
  
“And I think you’ve stumbled upon a new cocktail,” says Uhura, blinking at the blue drink she’s concocted out of Gaila’s soup and a healthy shot of rum. “What’s in this soup?”  
  
“If I tell, you will probably stop drinking,” replies Gaila sunnily. “Oh, I hope you don’t mind. I have invited some other friends.”  
  
Uhura blinks. It’s well past 2000 hours by now; the sun has dipped behind the horizon in a flaming smudge of bruised light, and the breeze that’s blowing up is crisp but not yet uncomfortably cold. They’ve mowed their way through most of the food, though they’ve admittedly barely made a dent in the liquor cabinet Gaila has carted along. “Other friends?”  
  
“The picnic was for the two of us, but I thought having some drinking company wouldn’t be objectionable,” says Gaila.   
  
“Well, who—”  
  
“Gaila? Is that you?”   
  
The voice is male, and carries with it tinges of Southern gentleman and nominal but unfailing annoyance with the general idea of life. She turns, and tries and fails to hide her surprise. “McCoy?”  
  
“Hello Leonard!” calls Gaila, sitting up and waving.   
  
Leonard McCoy crunches through the little copse of bushes that’s shielding them from the rest of campus and fixes them both with a suspicious little frown. “Hey, Gaila. Cadet Uhura. You seen Jim? We were supposed to walk over together. I’ve got the booze, he’s got the snacks.” McCoy holds up a bottle of whiskey sheepishly.  
  
“He messaged me earlier, warning me that he will be a little late,” says Gaila apologetically. “He did not tell you?”  
  
“No,” says McCoy, flatly, hovering by the edge of the blanket as though it’s a snake in the grass. “It appears he neglected to do that.”  
  
McCoy is dressed down in civvies as well, worn jeans with holes in the knees and an equally-faded hooded sweatshirt declaring an affinity for the Atlanta Thrashers. He’s also wearing an unfortunate blue knitted beanie that has plastered his dark hair down over his forehead, and the way he’s standing seems to indicate he’s feeling colder than Uhura and Gaila put together.  
  
“Come,” says Gaila, patting the blanket between her and Uhura. “Sit. There are leftovers from our dinner, as well as plenty of alcohol.”  
  
McCoy sinks reluctantly down onto the blanket with tense shoulders and a stiff back. He keeps sneaking looks at his communicator, and typing out furious messages. Gaila ignores all this and pours out a mostly-full glass of whiskey for him.   
  
“Jesus, Gaila, you tryin’ to kill me?” he demands, when she presses it into his hands. “I know Orions have a high tolerance, but humans—”  
  
“I am being pragmatic,” she says, sealing the bottle and putting it away. “This is all you’re allowed. This way, you’ll know exactly how much you have consumed, which often seems to be a problem for you at the end of a night out with Jim.”  
  
McCoy looks ready to argue this, and then he shrugs, and takes a sip of his glass. “Jim ain’t here, anyway.” He glances at Uhura, and she pretends she hasn’t been watching him curiously as he has settled himself on the blanket.  
  
“Would you like some dessert?” Uhura finds herself asking, less out of interest and more out of a complete lack of anything else to say. She’s never really spent time with McCoy, or really even seen him around campus without Kirk’s company. Once, he’d been the attending physician when she’d gone to get her vaccines updated at Medical, and he’d been polite and professionally brusque. “Or potato salad?”  
  
McCoy visibly brightens at the second suggestion, and it’s the first time Uhura has ever seen him smile. “Uhura, I’ll have you know I’m physically incapable of saying no to potato salad.”  
  
Despite the social lubricant of liquor and potato salad, it’s still awkward. McCoy checks his communicator about once every ten seconds, scowling each time, and he sits hunched over his glass with a plate in his lap, head turned toward the ocean, presumably watching a cluster of seagulls tearing apart some unfortunate pile of garbage. Gaila chatters on, likely aware of the uncomfortable nature of their little threesome yet unwilling to let it bring her down.   
  
McCoy starts taking bigger and bigger swallows of his whiskey, his shoulders tensing with each one.   
  
Half an hour later, Uhura, tipsy herself and feeling annoyed, blurts, “Don’t feel obliged to stay if Kirk isn’t going to show, McCoy. You won’t hurt our feelings.”  
  
McCoy startles, and looks up from where he’s stabbing yet another message into his hapless communicator. “What? Aw, hell, I’m sorry, I’m just—well, the damn kid is flaky as pie crust, sometimes, it’s just—” He cuts off, looking embarrassed.   
  
“Here,” says Gaila, coming to the rescue. She’s holding out a joint. “This may help us  _all_  relax.”  
  
Uhura and McCoy exchange a wary glance.   
  


oOo

  
  
“Congratulations, Uhura, on this dubious honour. I didn’t think it was physically possible for the world to contain a single person that actually liked that movie,” drawls McCoy in a thick slur. He’s lying on his back on the blanket, legs crossed at the ankle, and his eyes are wide and nearly black in the darkness, pupils blown wide.   
  
The tree is still doing a fantastic job of propping Uhura upright, because she’s having trouble staying vertical otherwise. Gaila, like McCoy, has given up the whole pretext of sitting and her head is pillowed in Uhura’s lap, body tucked beneath her, a second blanket draped over her bare legs. “You have no taste,” Uhura declares, gesturing violently into the sky. “I’m not sure why I’m surprised by that—you  _do_  hang out with Jim Kirk.”  
  
There’s a short silence. “Point,” rumbles McCoy, with a raspy sound that might be a chuckle. “But Gaila does, too, and you hang out with Gaila. Therefore, you also have no taste.”  
  
“The transitive property,” says Gaila solemnly. “He is correct.”  
  
Uhura makes a face. “I’m not sure I like the way this is going.”  
  
“Hmm,” says Gaila, tracing abstract designs on Uhura’s leg and making her shiver. “This evening did not quite go the way I thought it would. Jim and I had initially planned to fix you both up. It seemed quite natural. That is why he’s not here, Leonard. I was going to slip away. But if I had done that, I think I would have made you both very uncomfortable.”  
  
McCoy huffs, and mutters something under his breath that Uhura translates as “damn meddling kids.”  
  
“Agreed,” says Uhura, sighing. She wraps one of Gaila’s bouncy red ringlets around her finger and  _boinks_  it absently. “The picnic was just a ruse?”  
  
“Oh no,” says Gaila. “The picnic and the hoped-for wooing were separate endeavours.”  
  
McCoy grunts. As far as Uhura can tell, he’s getting close to catatonic—he’s finished his whiskey and has had several pulls on the communal joint without a single complaint about hygiene, and he hasn’t really moved in over an hour. Uhura extends her bare feet and braces them on his thigh. His only response is a diffident sort of sniff.   
  
Kirk chooses that moment to crash through the bushes, tripping over the basket and landing directly on McCoy.  
  
There is mild, controlled chaos for several minutes, as McCoy erupts in pained wheezing and Kirk keeps trying to get up off him and slipping, which means he repeatedly elbows McCoy in the face. Eventually, Uhura takes pity on them, and after dislodging Gaila, she grabs Jim’s flailing body under the arms and hauls him away from McCoy.   
  
“Oh my God,” whimpers McCoy, spasming gently on the blanket like a goldfish that has fallen out of its bowl. “How is this my life?  _How_?”  
  
Kirk stumbles back into Uhura’s chest, flailing clumsily. He seems to realize, with startling alacrity, just what part of her anatomy is cushioning him, and he springs away from her like he's just been electrocuted.  
  
Then he slips on the grass, abruptly loses his balance, and falls headfirst between McCoy's legs.  
  
“Oh my Gooood,” moans McCoy from the ground, his hands over his face. “ _Fuck my life_.”  
  
“This is far better entertainment than any of the Terran films I’ve seen recently,” observes Gaila, from her spot safely away from the action. She’s sitting wide-eyed with her hands tucked over her knees and pillowing her chin as she watches Kirk mutter half-hearted apologies into McCoy’s groin while McCoy tries very hard not to cry.  
  
Uhura would very much be inclined to agree.  
  


oOo

  
  
“I don’t understand,” says Kirk, fifteen minutes into the future when all offending limbs have been removed from affected areas. McCoy has backed up right off him and is curled up at a respectable distance away with Gaila, sullenly nursing a slice of raspberry tart that Uhura offered him out of empathy. “If the plan wasn’t going down, why didn’t anyone tell me? I could’ve been partying hard with your guys instead of sitting in the library doing trivia bodyshots with the astrophysics club. Which, frankly, would’ve been preferable—those guys are disturbingly hardcore about their trivia.”  
  
“Didn’t any and all of the several  _hundred_  messages I sent you tonight at all convey that?” pipes up McCoy grumpily. He stabs his fork into his tart and carves an unhappy face into the chocolate.  
  
Between the four of them, Uhura estimates their blood-alcohol level must be somewhere dangerously exponential and tries not to think about how bad the hangover will be tomorrow. All of Gaila’s purchases are strewn around the small area they’ve commandeered for their drunken picnic, and Uhura is feeling a hell of a lot more warm and fuzzy than she normally would be in the face of an unwanted matchmaking scheme gone awry. If she was hard-pressed to describe the full extent of cheerful relaxation she’s feeling, she’d have to go so far as to say she’s having  _fun_. In the company of  _Jim Kirk_.  
  
“He definitely sent a lot,” says Uhura. “I’m surprised your comm hasn’t actually exploded from the force of his disapproval.”  
  
“You get used to it,” mumbles Kirk. “It’s sort of like background radiation.”  
  
“It will kill you in a few years?” suggests Gaila.   
  
“That’s a generous estimate,” says McCoy under his breath.   
  
“Ha ha  _ha_ ,” says Kirk, with exaggerated delivery. He pulls his legs under himself and sits in a half-assed lotus position. “Ladies, don’t be fooled by his foul mouth and prickly disposition. Bones is actually just a hard crunchy shell of bitter resin surrounding a soft, nougat-y interior.”  
  
“I don’t want to know anything about his interior,” says Uhura, immediately, at the same time that Gaila says, “What do  _you_  know about his interior?”   
  
“This is not a conversation I want to be a part of,” says McCoy, pegging Kirk with a withering glare that would take out a cheerfully gambolling puppy at thirty paces. “So let’s stop all this now.”  
  
“Why does he call you ‘Bones’?” asks Gaila. Uhura could kiss her for changing the subject.  
  
“Because he’s an infant,” snaps McCoy. “And there’s so much smug ego clogging up what could actually be a decent, respectable brain that he can’t help himself being so desperately unimaginative.”  
  
“Speaking of names,” says Kirk, ignoring McCoy and Gaila and neatly segueing into his favourite Uhura-related topic. She knows it’s coming before he even gets past the second syllable. She knows because the expression on his face has gone sly and conniving like he thinks he’s being subtle, and she emits a shuddering, pre-emptive sigh. “I  _will_  find out, Uhura.”  
  
“Oh, fuck me running, Jim, why are you so dumb?” snaps McCoy, sitting up and waving his fork at Jim. “Have you lost the ability to read the listing in the student directory? Have you developed selective hearing? Because it’s  _Ny_ —”  
  
The way Jim slaps his hands over McCoy’s mouth makes the half-uttered name sound more like an indignant, muffled protest more than anything else.   
  
“BONES,” hollers Jim, holding McCoy’s jaw shut while McCoy’s eyes widen. “CEASE AND DESIST, MAN!”  
  
McCoy stabs him in the hand with his fork.   
  


oOo

  
  
“They are strange,” observes Gaila, after McCoy and Kirk have gone stumbling home, arm in arm, McCoy bitching steadily into Kirk’s ear about  _stupid fucking ideas_  and  _Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker if that fork wound gets infected because you’re an asshat then I ain’t fixin’ it, Jim_ —  
  
“They are that,” agrees Uhura. This entire evening has been an exercise in restraint and reserved judgement. Despite that, Uhura is cheerful as she helps Gaila pack up the empty bottles and demolished food. Gaila throws the blanket over her shoulders like a cape, then gestures for Uhura to join her.   
  
They wander back to their room with the blanket wrapped around their shoulders like they’re some sort of two-headed, flip-flop wearing creature from the coast.  
  
“Do you think they are having sex?” asks Gaila, leaning woozily into Uhura and steering them briefly sideways.   
  
“Who? Kirk and McCoy?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“No, but I think they’d like to be.”  
  
“Is there anyone  _you_  would like to have sex with?”  
  
Uhura thinks of Commander Spock, who teachers her course in Vulcan Language and Cultural History, and the way his dark eyes fix hers with an intensity that thrills her to the core. And then she thinks of Gaila, who is innocently holding her hand as they walk, and the way that when she smiles, Uhura can’t help but feel her heart beat faster.  
  
“No,” says Uhura.   
  


oOo

  
  
There’s some sort of retro night going on at the Academy bar, and even though it’s a Wednesday, Uhura picks out her favourite pair of heels and allows Gaila to dust gold glitter over her cheekbones.   
  
Whatever concept of ‘retro’ the event organizers were going for, it’s certainly schizophrenic. Uhura picks out music from several different decades, let alone centuries, and she comes to the conclusion that whoever laid out the evening’s playlist was probably just throwing music recordings at a dartboard and keeping what stuck.   
  
“This song is in Andorian,” shouts Uhura, looking around the room and wishing stroboscopic lightning had been lost to the sands of time.   
  
“All planets have a retro period,” says Gaila, turning back toward Uhura from the bar with two brightly-coloured, umbrella’d drinks in hand. “Here! Yours is green.”  
  
Uhura sees Kirk and McCoy at the other end of the bar, Kirk leaning into McCoy’s personal space to shout something into his ear. Whatever he’s saying has McCoy’s face scrunching up like he’s just sucked on a lemon. He catches Uhura’s eye across the bar and waves weakly.   
  
“Nyota!” says Gaila, pointing. “They will be doing karaoke in ten minutes!”  
  
“Oh God,” says Uhura. “Gaila, we’re not—”  
  
Gaila weaves their arms together and tugs Uhura to her feet. “We must duet,” she declares.   
  
“Oh God,” repeats Uhura.   
  
The thing is, Uhura can sing. She really can. She took voice lessons as a child, and enjoys singing, even if these days she only indulges in it when she’s in the shower or alone in the room. It’s something to which she hasn’t really given much thought since coming to Starfleet, and it’s a part of herself that is currently unknown to anyone she’s met here. It’s not that she doesn’t want anyone to  _know_.   
  
Not really.   
  
She just...doesn’t really want anyone to know.  
  
“We are after Leonard and Jim,” says Gaila, pushing through the crowd back to Uhura, a bubbly smile on her face. She reaches out and takes Uhura’s hand.   
  
“Oh  _God_.”  
  
“Don’t you want to know what we will be singing?”  
  
“Surprise me,” says Uhura, watching in horrified fascination as Kirk frog-marches McCoy onto the small stage, using both hands and all his weight to coerce him to the microphone.   
  
“Hey McCoy!” shouts a mocking voice, “Can I get your autograph?”  
  
“Hey Mitchell,” retorts McCoy, violently flipping him off, “I know how to incapacitate an adult male in less than five seconds!”  
  
“He says that to all the pretty girls,” says Kirk, into the microphone. He slings an arm around McCoy’s neck before the other man can escape, and launches into a slightly out of tune version of  _I Want to Hold Your Hand_. McCoy’s face begins to turn an interesting shade of red.   
  
“I’ve changed my mind. What are we singing?” Uhura asks Gaila with mild horror, as McCoy barks out a few sullen bars when Kirk stops singing completely and shoves him into the mic and holds him still.   
  
“The title is, I believe,  _Afternoon Delight_.”  
  
“ _Oh God_ ,” says Uhura, faintly.   
  


oOo

  
  
Highlights from the rest of the evening include Christine Chapel rapping to  _Intergalactic_ , the part where the karaoke machine exploded (Uhura can’t imagine anything other than blatant sabotage and she mentally congratulates whoever did it), and, after several attempts to revive the karaoke machine to no avail, the  _entire bar_  coming together to sing a rousing rendition of  _Single Ladies_  anyway.  
  
Somehow, and she’s not entirely sure when or why, she’s ended up at a diner, sitting next to Gaila at a booth, with Kirk and McCoy in the seats opposite them. It’s that painful sort of early, the point in the day where the sun is still struggling to climb over the horizon, a time that McCoy insightfully referred to as “ass o’clock in the morning”, and Uhura, with only the addition of a few more words, would be inclined to agree with him. She briefly meets McCoy’s gaze across the table, and they exchange a glance that’s becoming more and more familiar. It’s one that says ‘ _you too, huh_?’  
  
Kirk instigated the whole thing, though Gaila was equally adamant they finish their night of bad decisions with the traditional hangover cure—the greasiest, unhealthiest breakfast ever and lots of black coffee. Sleep had sounded a lot better than breakfast, to Uhura, but Gaila had looked disappointed at the idea of going on her own, and Uhura, despite the exhaustion pulling at her, was equally reluctant to leave her.   
  
The booth is cushy and wide, and Gaila is cross-legged on the padded bench, Uhura sitting with her legs crossed at the knee, while Kirk is hunched bright-eyed in the booth, his knees pulled up as he leans shamelessly on McCoy and steals food off his plate. His hair is doing something completely ridiculous, and McCoy’s isn’t much better; Uhura narrows her eyes, wondering if their respective disasters are naturally occurring or facilitated by handsy groping. McCoy, who is probably the farthest from any manner of ‘morning person’ Uhura has ever met, is now bent over his plate, his elbows the only structural support keeping him from planting face-first into his eggs. His head is in his hands, long fingers rubbing rhythmically at his scalp, and the line of his shoulders speaks volumes about the degree of headache he’s currently suffering.   
  
“Admit it, Bones,” says Kirk, carefully navigating the forest of McCoy’s arms to spear a fried potato and pop it into his mouth. “You and Arvanitaki were responsible for killing the karaoke.”  
  
McCoy grunts, non-committal.   
  
“It had to have been them,” says Kirk, turning his attention to Gaila and Uhura. “He went to the bathroom, and then Arvanitaki excused herself, and about two minutes later the karaoke machine  _fucking exploded_.”  
  
“It could be coincidence,” shrugs Gaila. There is a mountain of pancakes in front of her roughly the height of Kilimanjaro, and she’s picking her way through them with a single-minded determination that Uhura is relieved is dedicated to eating and not, say, taking over the world. “And Leonard and Eleftheria could have been doing something very different together. A  _liaison_.”  
  
Uhura side-eyes Gaila and sees that there is a small, nearly indistinguishable curve to her smile that reveals her sly and often over-looked sense of humour.   
  
“Ha,” scoffs Kirk, though there’s a note of uncertainty to his voice. He drapes his arm over McCoy’s broad back, his hand settling between his shoulder blades with a distinct hint of possessiveness. “Bones, tell them you weren’t getting it on with Arvanitaki in the bathroom.”  
  
McCoy lets out a long, exasperated sigh and picks up his fork, fisting it warningly. Kirk immediately drops his arm and scoots away from him. “Whoa, hey, it’s too early to be maimed.”  
  
“It’s never too early for you, Kirk,” says Uhura, cupping her mug of tea in her hands and closing her eyes as she breathes it in. “Besides, I’m pretty sure neither of them was responsible for the karaoke machine fiasco.”  
  
“Oh?” says Kirk, sitting up straighter. He reaches out for another one of McCoy’s hash browns, and McCoy lashes out with his other, non-fork-wielding hand, and snags Kirk’s wrist like a whip crack. Then, with exaggerated slowness, he moves Kirk’s hand back to his side of the table and drops it onto Kirk’s empty plate.   
  
“I think it was Suarez,” says Uhura, with a casual shrug. She sets down her tea and starts cutting her omelette into pieces. “I saw him lurking backstage, with a look of disgruntled horror on his face.”  
  
McCoy, oblivious to their conversation or deliberately blocking it out, spears a sausage with minutely shaking hands and dips the end into the yolk of his eggs. Kirk is suddenly fascinated with watching him chew, his gaze fixed on the steady working of his jaw.  
  
Gaila, in turn, watches Kirk watching McCoy, and angles her body toward Uhura, blue eyes bright and knowing. “I think you were right.”  
  
Uhura nods, hiding a small smile, her own heart fluttering in that distracting way it often does these days when Gaila gives her that degree of attention. She tamps it down for maybe a minute, and then gets preoccupied with Gaila, who is the only one out of the four of them that still looks nigh-on immaculate. Uhura’s skirt is rumpled, her heels have given her blisters, and her hair is probably in knots by now, after a night with it hanging loose in the sticky, just-shy-of-a-comfortable-temperature bar. But Gaila, Gaila looks refreshed and awake, her silver spangly shirt and shorts looking no worse for wear. She’s abandoned her red cowboy boots on the floor to pull her bare feet up beneath her, and the most amazing thing right now to Uhura’s tired, over-loaded brain, is how intact her curls are. Uhura is tempted to pull her fingers through them, wondering what the hell she uses as product or whether her hair is just— _naturally awesome_ , as Kirk might say.   
  
“Right about what?” asks Kirk, pulling his attention away from McCoy with obvious reluctance.   
  
“That you and Leonard are not yet sleeping together, but would probably like to be,” replies Gaila, promptly. McCoy immediately snorts into his eggs, Uhura wincing in sympathy as he draws in a shaking breath only to begin coughing in short, wheezing bursts.   
  
Kirk’s eyes are wide, and he pats McCoy on the back and then pushes his cup of coffee at him. He asks, “What makes you think we aren’t already?” and McCoy flings out an arm, smacking Kirk weakly in the middle of the chest.  
  
McCoy’s face is, once again, bright red.   
  


oOo

  
  
“Nyota,” says Gaila, when they get back to their dorm. “I have completed your drawing.”  
  
“You have?” says Uhura, pleasantly surprised. Her heartbeat picks up just a little, excitement thrumming through her body, and she lets her heels fall to the floor by her bed, dropping down onto the edge of the mattress.   
  
“Yes,” says Gaila, nodding. She kicks off her boots and strips off her clothes with natural assurance. She crouches down in bra and panties and starts to dig around under her bed, tossing out a hot-pink pair of shiny wedges and what looks like an antique circuit-board before emerging with a black frame in her hands. “I framed it for you, too.”  
  
Gaila flops down beside Uhura on the bed, passing her the framed sketch, and Uhura’s pattering heart leaps. “Oh Gaila,” she says, taking the frame and laying it on her thighs. “It’s  _beautiful_.” She brushes her fingertips over the layer of acetate protecting it, admiring the blend of hard and soft lines, the careful smudges of charcoal shading, and the curve of the landscape sprawling out of the drawing.  
  
“I’m glad you like it,” says Gaila, bumping her hip against Uhura’s, and that’s when Uhura carefully sets the frame aside and turns to Gaila, catching her slender shoulder with one hand and cupping Gaila’s cheek with the other. Gaila’s eyes widen fractionally, but she stays put, leans in a little, and Uhura draws her in further for a kiss which is mostly tentative and exploratory, with gentle pressure and probing tongue. It’s sticky-sweet; Gaila tastes like maple syrup and warm pancakes, and her lip-gloss smudges the corner of Uhura’s mouth.  
  
Uhura rests her forehead against Gaila’s for a moment, her fingers petting her curls, and then pulls back. “Thank you,” she murmurs.   
  
“There is no need to thank me,” says Gaila, her expression nothing but mischievous. “Because I have come to a decision about what it is I would like in return for the drawing.”  
  
Uhura laughs under her breath and arches an eyebrow. “That sounds terrifying, Gaila. If I wake up in a bathtub full of ice tomorrow, lacking a kidney, I will get revenge.”  
  
Gaila’s dimples materialize and she shakes her head. “It is nothing like that, nor is it a sexual favour. And only if you agree.” She leans in, presses peach-coloured lips to Uhura’s ear, and says something that makes Uhura go hot from head to toe.  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” says Uhura.   
  


oOo

  
  
Uhura stands in the bathroom, naked, and tells herself for the fifth time that this really isn’t that big of a deal.   
  
She’s not the type of person that’s particularly self-conscious about her body. She’s the same person in clothes or out of them. At the same time, Uhura is a relatively private person, and living in a room with another woman that was not a family member had taken some getting used to, especially when Gaila got home after class and immediately stripped off to change into something more comfortable, or when she came out of the bathroom wrapped very tenuously in a towel, still damp and dripping. The first time the towel had dropped, and Gaila had reached for her undergarments, Uhura had felt an uncharacteristic flush creeping up the back of her neck and had politely averted her gaze. She had refrained from asking why Gaila didn’t just bring her clothes into the bathroom with her, because Uhura wasn’t uncomfortable, just surprised, and she was sure Gaila would have adapted her habits had Uhura complained.   
  
Ever since she was a teenager, she was the girl that waited for a bathroom stall to be free before changing in the locker room after swim classes, not because she was embarrassed, but because the girls weren’t people she trusted, and she preferred to change privately, in her own time, without the awkward manoeuvring of towels to form a protective layer between her and the world.   
  
So if Gaila felt comfortable changing around her, or sitting around in a t-shirt and underpants, then Uhura had no issue. But it took Uhura herself several months to settle into the same habit, to be able to come out of the bathroom wearing a towel if she forgot her clothes on her bed, or to change into her pyjamas without having to turn her back on her roommate.   
  
She takes a breath, fusses with her hair for a moment, and then smiles bracingly at herself in the mirror. Just stepping out naked seems wrong, somehow.   
  
When she was in high school, before she realized that drawing was not among her talents, Uhura had taken a handful of life-drawing classes. The models had always worn robes which they’d dropped when they reached wherever they’d be sitting or standing, so Uhura looks around, picks up the fuzzy purple robe neither of them really wears, and wraps it around herself.   
  
Then she opens the bathroom door, steps out to where Gaila is sitting on her bed with sketchpad in hand, stands in front of her, and waits.   
  
Gaila looks up, her gaze travelling Uhura’s bare legs, over her torso, and stopping at her face.   
  
“Where would you like me?” asks Uhura, her fingers playing with the tie of the robe.   
  
Gaila taps a graphite pencil against her lower lip, and ponders. “On your bed. However you feel comfortable.”  
  
Uhura ends up sitting up against the headboard of her bed, knees drawn up, arms wrapped loosely around them. It’s comfortable enough for the time it takes Gaila to complete her sketch, There’s a pillow at her back and sheets pooled around her, and she’s let her hair fall over her shoulders and down her back, the long, soft strands tickling her bare skin. She feels confident and beautiful as she watches Gaila move her pencil with the same easy grace she devotes to her work, her hair pinned back out of her eyes as she draws.   
  
“Finished,” announces Gaila, over an hour later. Uhura has sat more or less still for that entire time, and she’s itching to move, to get closer—she stretches out her legs, swings them over the edge of the bed and gets to her feet, and in two steps is kneeling down between Gaila’s legs, taking the sketchpad from her and setting it aside.   
  
“Good,” says Uhura, dipping in for a kiss.  
  
“You didn’t wake up lacking an organ,” says Gaila, smartly. She kneels up, winding her fingers in Uhura’s long hair.   
  
“I’m giving it time,” replies Uhura. “Does this count as a sexual favour?”  
  
“It depends.”  
  
“On?”  
  
“Whether or not you’d like to go on a date, as well.”  
  
“I could be persuaded.”  
  
“A  _double_  date.”  
  
Uhura freezes in the act of stripping Gaila’s tank-top over her head.   
  
“Nyota?” says Gaila, somewhat plaintively, her voice muffled by the tangle of her shirt. “Nyota, I’m stuck.”  
  


oOo

  
  
“They’re not even together,” Uhura had protested.   
  
And Gaila had just smiled and kissed her sternum, and here was Uhura, a day later, standing in front of Kirk and McCoy’s dorm room door on her way back from class.   
  
She presses the chime and hears muffled voices inside, then thumping, like someone stumbling, and finally the door slides open and she’s faced with McCoy’s broad, naked chest barking “WHAT?” at her.  
  
Uhura assumes his head must still be present, but he’s in the middle of pulling on a shirt, so it takes a moment for it to pop through the collar. “Uhura,” he says, in surprise, his eyes widening. His hands immediately go to his hair, which is sticking up impressively, attempting to smooth it down into something that doesn’t look like he’s just been rolling around in bed with someone. He’s wearing boxers printed with bananas, and they’re on backwards. “What are you doing here?” She should be offended at the question, but he sounds legitimately confused.  
  
“Leonard,” she says lightly, remaining outwardly cool while inwardly cursing Gaila six ways from Sunday, to borrow one of McCoy’s expressions. Gaila knew  _exactly_  how together Kirk and McCoy would be. “If you’re busy, I can come back another time.”  
  
“No, it’s—fine,” McCoy says unconvincingly. Aside from the blatant sex-hair, his lips are also pink and swollen, and there’s a vivid red hickey on his throat that bobs when he swallows. “What can I do for you?”  
  
“Gaila was wondering if you and Kirk would like to go on a double date with us,” Uhura says, spitting it all out in a rush. For a moment, it’s deadly silent in the hallway, Uhura and McCoy staring at each other in that supremely awkward way that indicates both parties would rather be anywhere but here.  
  
The silence is broken by Kirk’s voice shouting, “Bones! I’ve got a serious case of wilting cock, here, man. If it’s Gary, tell him we’re having the long-awaited hot sex he’s been mocking us about and tell him to fuck off.”  
  
Uhura looks at McCoy, and McCoy looks at Uhura.   
  
“A date, huh,” says McCoy, with remarkable composure for a man who’s steadily turning the colour of a beetroot.  
  
“Yes,” says Uhura, apologetically.  
  
“Well,” says McCoy, “I suppose it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”  
  
“ _Boooones_. Your mouth, my dick—”  
  
“I have to go now,” says McCoy abruptly, raising his voice to drown out Kirk.   
  
“Understood,” says Uhura, saluting him.   
  
The door closes in her face, and a moment later she hears McCoy shouting indistinctly at Kirk, and then Kirk’s laughter, followed by a loud yelp.  
  
Uhura turns, very deliberately, and starts to walk back down the corridor.   
  
She’s hard-pressed to figure out how exactly she’s ended up here, going on picnics with Gaila and letting herself be talked into karaoke and posing nude and, seriously, planning a double date with Kirk and McCoy, but she figures McCoy’s got the right idea:  
  
It’s definitely better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.


End file.
